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City council meeting — personal report

First off, the council upheld the appeal of the West Napa Street hotel Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and approved the preparation of a revised EIR. Planning Director David Goodison assured the council that all public comments were being held in mind. The council then voted four to one to refund the appeal fee, with Edwards voting no.

The third agenda item was a request by council member Harrington to “schedule a council discussion to review the city’s contract with the Sonoma Valley Visitor’s Bureau, including termination of contract and reallocation of funding.”

This agenda item was about whether or not to put the question on the agenda for future discussion, and not for a substantive discussion of issues now.

Amy Harrington explained her reasoning for proposing the above agenda item. She said the issue is to question the allocation of funds. She wants to consider all the pieces of the city’s direct and indirect funding of tourism promotion. Harrington wants to give a picture to the community about what the city is doing, through council discussion. It’s about priorities, and having a discussion with the Tourism Improvement District (TID) and the Sonoma Valley Visitor’s Bureau (SVVB) about fair funding.

Background: The city is giving the SVVB $100,000 a year for three years, and the city has enabled the TID to charge a bed tax-type fee that is now netting the TID close to $800,000 a year. The city council approved the TID’s bed tax for ten years, and this authority cannot be taken back, and the city does not have the authority to manage the TID, or control of the money, though the city manager is on the TID board of directors, and the council could provide direction there. As well, the city gives the Chamber $100,000 a year to act as an economic development arm of city policy.

Thus, Harrington’s proposed agenda item was basically a move to provide potential for city council oversight, and possible control over what is essentially public money, and city funding of tourism promotion and economic development. This control has been de facto, ceded by past councils, to the TID, SVVB and Chamber.

The meeting then went to public comment.

Larry Barnett gave a history of how in his 12 years on the council, items were able to be put on the agenda by council members without permission of a majority vote. He suggested the council could change back to the old way, as it makes sense that elected representatives should be able to put forward items that represent their constituent interests, and not be blocked by other council members who represent different constituencies.

Planning Commission Chair James Crib spoke first, as a private citizen. Crib questioned why Harrington was “intent on doing damage to small business?” Crib said he felt that other citizen’s talk of balancing resident’s quality of like and tourism really amounted to taking visitors away.

Chris Petlock followed up on Barnett’s comments on how items get agendized, and said the process needs to be more transparent. Petlock said it is a mystery to him and to many, how things get on the agenda; he would raeally like to know how and why.

Fred Allebach said he supported Harrington’s rationales, and furthermore, balancing residential quality of life and tourism has been a council goal for many years. This is a discussion the community wants to have, he said.

SVVB director Jonny Westom spoke next. He said if funding money was not there, the SVVB location and services could be effected. He also mentioned he has been contacting tour bus companies to educate them on city protocols and preferences.

Michael McNeil, a SVVB board member and winery guy said, “all of us rely heavily on tourism.” Sonoma is a premier travel destination, he said, and tourism promotes economic vitality; tourism is a “vital economic resource.” He gave a lot of stats and numbers. McNeil said the SVVB has its “eyes on the prize… and its mission to enhance economic vitality.” A funding cut to the SVVB will cut economic vitality, he said.

George Thompson said the SVVB functions to collect and disseminate information, to travel magazines for example. For funding, the TID can subsidize the SVVB, he said.

Bill Blum, board member of the SVVB and TID, spoke of the 30+ year partnership of the city and SVVB, and that this agenda item hits him hard personally. It would be devastating to the city to end the 30+ year partnership. 68% of the city’s discretionary revenues come from tourism, said Blum. For every one point that hotel occupancy goes up, that is $100,000 for the General Fund, said Blum. MacArthur Place has 85% occupancy; if SVVB funds are cut, there would be a significant drop in mid-week occupancy, and a hit to economic vitality.

Lynn Clary said, this is a “discussion that has needed to take place for a long time.” Put it on the agenda, he said.

Former SVVB director Wendy Peterson spoke of an “enduring and endearing partnership with the city… in a tourism-based economy… working with you every step of the way.” “We’re working as a team.” Tourism “makes Sonoma the greatest place to live”, said Peterson. “We have to create some balance… but the SVVB is a trusted partner that you need… in a tourism-based economy.”

SVVB board president Gary Saperstein spoke of partnership and relationship. “We work to provide a balance”, he said. SVVB is a vital part of the community, and steers people to every type of business in the valley. With any loss of funding, business would lose out too.

SVVB operations manager Jose Luciano said that loss of funds would “tear the organization down.”

Patricia Cullinan did not take sides, but did support agendizing the item so the council could discuss the merits, and that all of the public could speak on the tourism issue.

SVVB board member Leslie John spoke of the identity of Sonoma. If the SVVB loses funding, it would not be able to stay in the Carnegie library, she said. She also mentioned how much money tourism gives to the General Fund.

Long term resident Marilyn Goode said some tourists are fine, but too many have the effect killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The whole county is “reeling with tourism”, said Goode, noting that the same set of tourism issues is not confined to Sonoma. Goode also noted that the national Chamber of Commerce is a hard-right wing group with many positions (voter suppression for one) antithetical to Bay Area liberal values. “They (National Chamber) are not a nice organization”, she said, hoping that the local business folks did not share those values. Goode invoked Monterey, and how that small town has been destroyed by too many visitors; ”we need to value something more…”, she said.

Then the meeting came to council discussion.

David Cook made it clear that the motion this evening was only to discuss putting the item on a future agenda, not to discuss the substance of the issues now. Cook said the council will be looking at all contracts this year, and no one should feel singled out. “We want to look at everything.” Cook explained that agenda items are related to council goal priorities (as vetted by the city manager). Cook supported Harrington’s request, but he was clear to say that doesn’t mean he is for or against shifting the funding source for the SVVB. Cook said that city staff could do the issue of SVVB funding due diligence, “because it’s a big deal, 30 years is a long time.”

Gary Edwards said that the SVVB and tourism is “what this community is about.” Sonoma, “was and always has been a tourist economy, forever.”

Edwards said that philanthropy comes from tourism wealth. He rambled a bit, and got to his usual narrative inclusion of Bob Cannard, this time leaving out Ig Vella. He said we “have a wonderful (tourism) community… I don’t have issues talking about it.” He linked ag success to tourism. Of the proposed SVVB funding shift, he said, “who do we fire first?” He went on to trivialize questioning tourism as “like leaf blowers”, a pursuit that would take up a lot of time when the council could presumably be working on more important things. He explained how he spends his money on the Plaza, locally, and called out those who shop on Amazon.

People are moving to Sonoma, he said, because of statistics and information gleaned from the SVVB website. He later jumped in and said that 1100 hotel rooms are being built in the county, and by inference, Sonoma needs to get its share of those. Lower-end hotels are losing business he said, and a recession is going to come sometime. So, he said, Sonoma needs more high-end hotels.

Edwards would not be supporting Harrington’s agenda item.

Madolyn Agrimonti buttered up Amy to start, saying “she is the only one who can get anything on the agenda.” She then took an interesting line and said the SVVB was simply doing its job and if there was a policy failure regarding tourism, it was by the city council, and she took responsibility for failing to address and provide oversight on tourism issues herself. She mentioned specifically buses and tasting rooms. She finished by saying that there are “other ways we can do that”, then by looking at SVVB funding. She would not support the agenda item.

Agrimonti later jumped in and said the city has fiscal reserves, “there is money there to be used.” And, she implied, she has not been able to get clear answers as to where the money is.

Amy Harrington said her proposed agenda item was not a criticism of the SVVB, but rather a question of fiscal priorities, of who can afford to pay for the SVVB today? Is it fiscally appropriate for the city to support the SVVB when the TID has so much money? Is it fair, said Harrington, for Sonoma taxpayers that they pick up the SVVB $100,000 per year, when there are so many dire needs (affordable housing) in the city that are not being funded? It is fair for the TID to pay for the SVVB, and for other things that are being neglected to get addressed.

Mayor Hundley commented last, and did a great job of maximizing the drama of her swing vote, as Harrington and Cook were yay, and Edwards and Agrimonti nay. “For residents concerned about tourism, I hear you”, she said. She admitted that the wheels of government turn slowly (i.e. that balancing resident’s quality of life and tourism has been a council goal for four years, and things according t some, are only getting more out of balance.)

“I’ve only been here five years…”, she said. “The SVVB unfairly gets put on a stake as representing tourism… we need them as a partner… without them, things would get divided.” However, she noted that she respects council member Harrington, and the themes on which Harrington ran for council, and that she would support having an agenda item to discuss the SVVB funding, but not support putting the termination of contract clause in.

Final stages: the council and city manager had a few back and forths about timing, and staff advice was given. Harrington made a motion with the wording of the agenda item and no one made a second. Dead silence. Cook then made a motion to discuss and review the SVVB funding and contract ASAP, as soon as staff can prepare a report, in 2017. The SVVB budget will be done by the end of August, and Hundley made a friendly amendment to wait to include that information in the staff report. This motion passed three to two, with Edwards and Agrimonti as nays. City manager Capriola said the item would be agendized in October.

Analysis

Credit to the city manager for putting this item on the agenda. The discussion of this item stayed almost entirely on the issues. Given that tourism issues are county-wide, and salient for the whole nine-county Bay Area, there ought to be some sense of being able to frame these issues in a sensible way.

Issues broke out along familiar themes. Talk of “the community” ended up being a proxy for particular constituency’s interests and values, represented by various council members. Who is “the community” and what are their values? The community is, in reality, made up of different and sometimes competing interests. Council members and the public have different understandings. These things get debated in public forums, sometimes with acrimony, sometimes leading to larger understandings.

In the case of this agenda item, some put economics and money as the highest measure of value; others value less material aspects of quality of life. With the tourism issue, there is a fundamental gulf of values. Stakeholders are talking past each other and not acknowledging the validity of the other’s beliefs, opinions, and values. Some think tourism is just great, all benefit with no cost; others see many costs. Booster stalk about the General Fund and city finances, critics talk about Disneyland feel, high inflation, gentrification, high rents, and low wages.

One interest group sees a monetary constellation of issues, that of business, profits, contracts, and city funding. Another interest group sees a sustainability-based constellation of issues having to do with social equity, inclusion of the working class into the community, and full cost greenhouse gas footprint. Each side here avoids framing issues in terms of the other guys. Thus any larger understandings of community issues as a whole ends up framed as a zero sum game, where the desires of one interest are a loss to another. We never get to a bigger picture because of a long-term stalemate between interest groups in town.

The Hidden in Plain Sight study is a call to bridge this gap in perception of interests, as are other efforts by groups in the valley to create tables with diverse actors. Other actors have called for government to be a more forceful player. Electeds are divided about the role of government, some want to use it as a lever for social and environmental issues, others to economically enable the private sector.

Economic vitality is an ill-defined a weasel word phrase used by the city and the TID and SVVB. For some it is a holy grail, for others it is like an addiction. Fundamental question: does the city’s financial structure revolve around the continual hype of Sonoma as a Disney-like luxury destination, where more and more is always needed to satisfy the demand created by more and more? Is the city itself being managed like a resort, or is this a city, that has a population with many interests beyond tourism boosting, one that needs to be managed for the residents who live here? Whose interests does the city get managed for? Business as primary? Residents as primary? Who can articulate the full scope of issues here and get us all beyond the current  zero sum checkmate?  Maybe city manager Capriola will frame this up in her staff report in a manner intelligible to all parties? Hope springs eternal.

If balance of tourism and residents has been a council goal for years, where’s the beef, why are so many still unsatisfied? If we are a team, why are residents who think there is too much tourism left out of the TID and SVVB management and branding discussions? Who gets to decide, people who value more and more money or people who value less material qualities of life? A core issue seems to be limits vs. no limits, and a covert issue is likely a conflict between free market ideology and those who support government planning and controls. Controls and limits are seen by some negatively as “regulations” and “takings”, whereas sustainability folks see limits and controls as public benefits, for example, clean air and water, and fair labor practices.

One key sticking point for explanatory discourse here is of causality. For the free marketers, all comes down to liberty of individual volition, and then an emergent property of an invisible hand is supposed to operate to create a larger social good. For sustainability advocates, unfettered individual actions create structural issues (pollution, slavery, exploitation etc.), and these structural issues can only be addressed by putting controls on these individual excesses. At issue here is human nature itself, and the fact is, we are all these things, violent, compassionate, greedy, inclusive, exclusive etc. If we are shepherds of our own capacities, we must account for and bring home all our metaphorical sheep.

This is what our elected representatives are tasked to do: bring home and account for all the sheep of our social universe.

Potential defunding of the SVVB was spoken of in personal terms, of breaking up a relationship, when all that is really being proposed is to have the TID fund the SVVB and not the city. All would still be stakeholders in the same city and valley. The city is already enabling funding of the TID, so it is just changing funding source from one public agency that is struggling for money (the city) to one that has lots of money (the TID). But it seems that those who primarily value money  and economic vitality, the TID and SVVB, cannot help but take this fiscal questioning as a personal affront, rather than a pragmatic shifting of resources.

The TID and SVVB, like any agency, does not like outsiders coming in and telling them what to do, especially with their money. But their money is public money granted to them to collect by the city council. The TID and SVVB must have plans and budgets, and not see the flexibility to change according to other’s priorities. They also have payroll, and it would be good to see in the end-of-August budget report, how much money goes to SVVB and TID staff? Who is the public supporting and for how much? In a town where everyone volunteers for many jobs that should be paid, maybe some trimming of the SVVB bush is in order? This questioning of control of funding becomes as much a psychological and turf issue as it is a fiscal issue. From the outside, many would question why the TID/ SVVB conglomerate cannot adapt and simply have the TID pay for the SVVB, and shift their own budget accordingly? This would be a graceful move.

Loss of funding however, is seen as catastrophic by the SVVB and TID, as a negative impact on business in general, but for $800,000 of public money, the two tourism promoting entities ought to be able to get the job done. The Chamber is the entity responsible for promoting business in general anyway. What about them? The city is giving them an additional $100,000 a year as well. This is a million dollars a year to promote economic vitality. Some here see that the city should not have to throw another $100,000 on top of that. For people who understand money, that should be a reasonable proposition. In addition, maybe the current emphasis on economic vitality is actually having major negative consequences that the boosters refuse to acknowledge?

How long someone has lived here continues to be an entertaining aspect of public comment, as if length of residency confers more legitimacy, even if such and such an opinion was dead wrong. Fact: a person who has lived here one year, but is capable of articulating the issues clearly and understandably, is worth more than one local who has a limited opinion, but has lived here their whole life. People who have “only lived here” for so many years, but who fail to grasp the issues, just have not put in the time to study them properly. What if the city manager were to say, “I have only been here less than one year, so I can’t judge…”  That would be an unacceptable proposition, to be ignorant or legitimate, based on length of residency. However, it is likely that people will continue to invoke how long they have lived have to buttress their arguments. In that regard, let it be known that William Penn himself invited my Mennonite ancestors to this country in 1665; 352 years here! Way more than the paltry five, 10 or 30 years invoked by others. Therefore, my analysis here is significantly more legitimate than almost any others.

Analyzing Gary Edwards

Historical correction: the Resort Era did not start until the 1890s, and lasted until @ 1920 and Prohibition. After Prohibition was the Depression, and then WW2, followed by economic doldrums, and groundwater troubles, after which the Sonoma Aqueduct was constructed, and county branding shifted away from being the Redwood Empire to being Wine Country in the mid 1980s. Every town has some component of hospitality services i.e., restaurants and hotels/ motels, and for Sonoma, “tourism” per se has been primary only in the Resort Era and from the mid 1980’s on. So, Sonoma has not always been a tourism economy, that is a tourism booster public relations fabrication.

In Edwards’ Sonoma, you have to be able to afford it, and if you can’t, you have not worked hard enough and don’t deserve it. From previous analysis of Edwards positions, his thinking is based on strict father morality, a value system out of step with Bay Area liberalism. These are the values he has when he talks about “our community.” “Us” is the economic elite.

Edwards opens up systemic aspects of how luxury tourism promotion has resulted in real estate desirability (and thereby, higher costs) but he sees this as good, because the people who can afford it deserve it. People who find homes here as a result of the SVVB website are automatically good people who will be able to shop on the Plaza. Yet the whole luxury tourism/ gentrification ball of wax is displacing, and unaffordable to, the venerated locals and the working class. People are moving here because of luxury tourism, but instead of seeing gentrification as a problem, as many do, Edwards sees it as a benefit. Edwards constituency is the rich and entitled, and the more the SVVB can sell an elite lifestyle, the better.

To an unknown extent, the TID and SVVB buy into Edwardian values, and to the values of the national Chamber. It is up to the TID and SVVB to display that they are woven from of a wider clothe. If “the community” is to be invoked, all actors have to be able to see their place in the community, to feel included and represented. Values do differ here in town, that’s natural, but it is becoming clear that one group of interests is entirely comfortable being exclusive.

Conclusion

Maybe if certain values say all don’t need to be included, the public will see we are indeed up against a strict father cohort here with the TID/ SVVB people.

“Balance”, here, is really about our values as humans beings, and tourism policy is a proxy for that.

Where discourse needs to get to, is for business and sustainability people to understand what makes each other tick, and to reach some plan where all feel included, valued, and, that the future of town and the valley can be agreed upon by actors whose values seem to be diametrically opposed. This may not be possible, as sustainability calls for reaching a carrying capacity, which means dialing back consumption of resources, not constantly increasing consumption, and energy use. Business interests and tourism seem to be calling for increased growth and consumption.

If values and cohorts are fundamentally opposed, the least we can do is to articulate that clearly so we can see what is at stake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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